


And if the night is burning

by Builder



Series: Nat on Fire [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Addiction, CA: TWS compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, Emotions, Everyone is kinda gay, Feels, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self Respect, Sex, Sickfic, Troubled Past, Vomiting, idk how to tag this, injuries, mentions of eating disorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 12:31:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11759958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Builder/pseuds/Builder
Summary: The truth is she’s been an addict since before she was a teenager.  Maybe her whole life, as she doesn’t know her parents.  Maybe she was a crack baby.  Or whatever you’d call them in Russian.  Since Nat’s earliest memories, she’ been poised to explode.  Gunshots soothe better than lullabies.  Hurting other people, hurting herself, has always been as appealing as cakes and days at amusement parks were to other children._____________________________________________________________________________________Nat's injured on a mission, she and Steve are stranded, and they could both use a mental health day.Think of this as a remix of Hotter than a fantasy, lonely like a highway.  Or think of the whole Nat on Fire series as variations on a theme.





	And if the night is burning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cat/gifts).



> Welcome back to canon-land. Or mostly canon, as I like making up backstories. This is strictly powers-verse, so no AU to be found here.
> 
> Set after CA: TWS and before whatever comes next. This is basically the same plot as Hotter than a fantasy, lonely like a highway, but all the details are different. So if you liked that, you'll like this. And if you didn't, well, this is more of the same.
> 
> Trigger warnings: read the tags
> 
> It will probably become obvious later, but I don't do drugs (although sometimes I have dreams that I do). My characters do drugs. I do my best to write that, but it's one thing that I can't rely on experience for the right words.
> 
> Cat, I'm gifting this to you because you suggested I write more Nat and Steve. Don't freak out. You owe me nothing. I'm just so happy you planted the idea.
> 
> Future people--If I write on a prompt from you, I'll gift the works to you too.
> 
> Visit me on Tumblr @Builder051 (It's a lovely sickfic blog).

And if the night is burning  
I will cover my eyes  
For if the dark returns then my brothers will die

____________________________

Nat crouches behind a pile of cardboard boxes as gunfire rings out in the alley.  She spends a second hoping the TV equipment or whatever the fuck’s supposed to be in these boxes is actually _in_ them so there’s something substantial between her and her assailant.  Then a bullet flies through the cardboard just over her right shoulder, ripping through the image of the assembled speaker system.  Nope, they’re empty. 

 

Nat scuttles back against the brick wall to make her obscured body a smaller target behind the flimsy barricade.  She takes a deep breath, inhaling the oniony-potatoey scent from the industrial-looking chimney on the building’s roof.  A restaurant?  An old lady’s apartment?  A school canteen? 

 

She doesn’t have time to speculate; another bullet pierces the cardboard, shooting through the makeshift wall in the center of the half-moon of space in Nat’s squatting profile between her breasts and her knees.  Close.  She’s had closer, but it doesn’t stop her from taking a second to wonder if push-up bras offer any protection from gunfire.  She decides she isn’t keen to find out.  Not a bad idea for uniform enhancements, though.  She’ll have to pass it on to Stark later.

 

Nat wants to put her face up to the jaggedly round hole in the box and try to get a visual on the target, but that’s unbelievably stupid.  The freak she’s after will probably shoot the same spot again, just hoping she’s dumb enough to put her head in the line of fire.  Instead, Nat glances away from the box tower.  The two bullet holes are letting in two weak streams of light from the setting sun, like mini search lights hitting the ground in silver-dollar circles.

 

Nat’s ear crackles like she’s underwater as her comm clicks to life.  There’s something staticky, like a badly tuned radio, then a muffled panting.  “I don’t copy.  Can’t hear you.  Nat?  You good?”

 

Nat opens her mouth and makes the gentlest of exhales.  She would answer, but one of the bullet holes suddenly isn’t letting in light anymore.  And that can mean only one thing.  Get him before he gets her.

 

Nat kicks the largest box over, sending bits of packing paper everywhere and collapsing the off-leaning tower.  A VCR and a few rogue cassette tapes join the great topple as Nat leaps through the pile of detritus and lands a foot in the center of the thug’s chest.  His gun goes off, but it’s pointed somewhere off to the side and above both their heads as Nat forces him to the ground. He’s wearing a bulletproof vest, so Nat’s foot does little to nothing but confuse his center of gravity.  He reaches a thick black-gloved hand for her ankle, but it’s quickly occupied elsewhere when Nat drags the toe of her other boot into his crotch.  He’s still groaning when Nat knocks him unconscious with a blast of energy from the tiny arc reactor around her wrist.

 

“Yeah, I’m good,” she finally answers Steve.  “One down.  Where are you?”

 

“A couple streets down, where that big sign is with the can of soup on it,” he says, making do with landmarks because he can’t read the Russian street signs.  “I got two over here,” Steve pauses, breathes heavily.  There’s static for a second, then, “One hand-to-hand.  One shooting.”

 

“Be right there,” Nat says, locating the billboard in question and bee lining for it.  She gets to a dead end on the narrow alley, and ends up shooting the lock off the back door of what turns out to be a pawn shop before bursting inside to take the shortcut through the little store. 

 

“Sorry, my ex-boyfriend,” she hurriedly lies to the startled shop owner in Russian before bolting out the front door and in between two dilapidated buildings where Steve is, in fact, meleeing it out with another thug under the can of soup sign.

 

“Yo,” Nat says, a little lamely, to get Steve’s attention.  “Where’s your shooter?”  It’s as much a question to Steve as a goad to said shooter.  True to his microscopic intelligence and inflated ego, the shooter sends a bullet whistling past Nat’s head, ruffling her hair and making her comm crackle more than it already is.

 

“You hear from Fury at all?  Besides static, I mean.  Anything on HQ for these jerks?” Nat asks once she’s tracked the trajectory of the bullet to a figure stooped between the top of a dumpster and a tent-like overhang coming off the back of another shop.

 

“Nothing.  All I’m getting is crunching on his end,” Steve says.  Nat can hear the clang of body armor against his shield both in real-life proximity and through her comm.

 

“Alright, well, it’s a good thing we know what to do,” Nat says.  She zig zags across the narrow pathway between the buildings, passes under the legs of the billboard, which is dripping something Nat hopes is only leftover rainwater, and leaps up onto the lid of the thankfully closed dumpster.

 

The vibrations from her boots on the flimsy plastic knock the jerk off balance, and he’s still looking for Nat, or possibly Steve, through the sight on his rifle when his real problem is about two feet from his face.  Nat jams her knee under the gun so it thumps back into the thug’s face, sending him stumbling back a step. 

 

Step 1: get the gun out of the equation.  Nat takes advantage of the assailant’s moment of disorientation and elbows him in the chest so his gun goes out to the side, spraying a couple of bullets into the back of a building, unconsciously—for him, consciously for Nat —away from her and Steve.  A quick kick to the forearm and the satisfying crunch of bone and the gun is lost to the sidewalk as the thug instinctively grips at his broken arm.

 

Step 2: get to a stable surface.  The plastic lid on the dumpster is apparently not meant to bear a few hundred pounds of scrabbling humans, and Nat can feel it flexing and bending under her boots.  While good for disorienting an opponent, it’s dangerous for her, especially when she’s standing in the sloping center of the cover while the opponent has the advantage of the more stable edge. 

 

The thug finishes feeling up his injured forearm and charges Nat.  She steps to the side and locks both hands around the arm that’s supposed to be clocking her in the chest.  The thug sweeps his leg behind her boots, but Nat picks up her foot.  She dodges a couple of times in an absurd, violent tango and then wraps his ankle in the crook of her knee.  It takes a second of bouncing on the buckling plastic under their feet to rob the thug of his balance on his standing foot, and another second to send him over the back of the dumpster.

 

Step 3: incapacitate.  It turns out to be only too easy, as even though the fall is low, only about six feet, the way Nat’s entwined with the thug sends him to the pavement head first.  They both start to fall, then Nat starts to let go of him.  The top of her boot catches on something on the back of the dumpster and Nat re-tightens her grip on the assailant’s arm.  But he’s heavy and she’s stuck and she feels her shoulder peel out of the socket just the second before she kicks herself free of what turs out to be an exposed bolt lacerating her ankle.

 

If the thug wasn’t already unconscious when his head hit the ground, he certainly is when Nat’s upper body comes down on his face.  That’s really the least of her worries, though.  Her shoulder is screaming in white-hot pain like some demon is twirling her deltoids and triceps as if the muscles are spaghetti on a fork.  Dislocated joints are some of the worst pain, probably because they’re not life-threatening and the body doesn’t protect the peripheral areas with numbness and adrenaline like it does for the visceral organs.

 

Nat should be able to pop her own shoulder back into place, get up, maybe shoot the jerk under her back for good measure, and go rescue Steve from his combat.  She tries to shift onto her uninjured left elbow, but even that amount of movement makes her vision flash white and the taste of metal bloom in her throat.

 

“Nat?”  It sounds slightly crackly in her ear, and Nat’s not sure if time has passed.  “This one’s taken care of.  Where are you?”

 

“Ah, fuck,” Nat mutters.

 

“What’s your location?” Steve asks.

 

“Hundred yards down.  Behind the dumpster,” she croaks out, trying to keep the pain from being prominent in her voice.

 

“You’re injured,” Steve infers,

 

“I’m fine.”  Nat doesn’t really know why she denies it.  “I’m good.  Target’s down.  I’m getting up.”  Which leads to the fact that she’s currently down. 

 

“I’m coming.  What happened?”

 

“Nothing,” Nat grunts as she grits her teeth and shoves herself to seated.  Lights flash in front of her eyes, and somehow through the haze of painful dizziness Nat finds her feet on the ground.  “I’m fine.”  She stumbles a ways away from the downed thug and finds the edge of building to lean on with the shoulder that’s not currently smoldering in circles of hell.

 

“Hey.”  Footsteps pound up behind her, and the voice is most certainly carried to her ear on the chilly breeze rather than through her comm.  “What happened?  What’s wrong with your arm?”

 

“Nothing,” Nat says again.  “Was just roughing him up.”  She inhales sharply and swallows hard.

 

“Where is he?”

 

Nat jerks her head in what she thinks is the direction of the assailant’s body. 

 

“Huh?  Oh.”  She can tell from Steve’s reaction that she was a little off.

 

“Yeah, he’s down for the count.”  Then he turns all attention back to Nat.  “You need medical attention.”

 

“No, I’m…”  She tries to steel herself up to shift her shoulder back into place, but she can’t do it.  Whether it’s excess of pain or lack of gumption or the fact that the wall’s starting to melt under her weight, she’s not sure.  “God.  Fuck.”

 

“Nat.”

 

“No, it’s nothing.”  She takes a shallow breath.  “My shoulder’s out,” she finally admits.  “It’s really nothing.  I just—can you, just, like, pop it back in?”

 

“What?”  Steve sounds a little taken aback.  “I’ll call in a medevac.”

 

“Steve, I fucking swear,” Nat hisses. 

 

“Someone with proper training should look at it.”  He busies himself with his comm for a moment, but after a few loud staticky blasts and ‘do you copy?’s, he gives up.  “I still can’t get ahold of Fury.  Or anyone back in DC.”  He reports it as if Nat hadn’t just heard the whole thing on her own in-ear communication device.

 

Nat’s getting lightheaded.  She presses her temple into the cold stone of the building.  “Will you please fucking fix it?”  She’s talking about her messed up shoulder.

 

“But, I don’t know…”

 

“Grab above the elbow with one hand and the wrist with the other,” Nat instructs as she swallows the saliva that’s flooding her mouth.

 

“You’re sure about this?” Steve asks.

 

“Yes.  Fuck.  Come on.”

 

He hesitantly takes her arm in the designated places.

 

“Now just move the whole thing upward until you find the joint.” 

 

“I’m going to hurt you,” Steve mutters.

 

He’s right, and Nat squeezes her eyes shut and bites her lip as she feels the first tentative movement.  Vertigo is playing around her sinuses.  “It’s fine.  Go.  Now.”

 

“Nat, you’re sure?”

 

“Yes, and it hurts more the longer you don’t get a fucking move on,” Nat snaps.  Nausea crashes in her throat, and she can feel pain reverberating in her other shoulder, her forehead, her kneecaps.

 

“I…ok,” Steve says.  He grips her arm and swiftly moves it upward.  Over the five seconds or so of agonizing shifting, Nat’s entire body contracts.  Sweat breaks out on her forehead and upper lip.  The street dissolves into angry neon sparkles and she can smell bile as much as she can taste it. 

 

Finally Nat experiences the satisfactory clunk with all five senses.  The pain climaxes and quickly begins to dissipate as her skin goes clammy, her vision distorts, and she loses the will to hold the spasm in her throat.  A thin stream of vomit splashes to the sidewalk.

 

Steve, who has let go of her, flutters around Nat as if he’s not sure how or where or if he’s allowed to touch her.  “Are you ok?  What’s…how can I help?”

 

“I’m good,” Nat coughs.  Bile clings to her lip, and she hastily wipes it on her sleeve as she shifts so her back is against the cold stone wall of the building.  Balance seems to be flooding back as the pain recedes, and it’s making Nat feel heavy and tired.  She holds her right arm close to her body with her forearm across her abdomen, which accomplishes the dual purpose of immobilizing her shoulder and putting soothing pressure on her uneasy stomach.

 

“What can I do?  What do you need?”  Steve asks.  He strips off his helmet and gloves and drops them in a pile on top of his shield. 

 

“Will you fuck off?  I’m good,” Nat says, not meaning to be so brusque.  But she hurts, and that’s the problem.  The sharp, excruciating pain is gone, but everything aches in a unique cadence that leaves her touchy and unsteady on her feet.  Nat’s head throbs.  Her throat smarts.  The whole right side of her body, neck to waist, feels hot and stiff like there’s a bad sunburn inside her muscles.  Her stomach feels like it’s around her knees.

 

And all of it, the whole uncomfortable package, is reminding her of old stuff, of things she thinks she’s over, things she left behind at a truck stop sometime around the Christmas of ’05. Things she’s not supposed to feel anymore because she’s no longer young and stupid, things that are definitely not supposed to suddenly resurface out of the blue during some piddly mission of __here, take a partner and a turbulent flight and go knock some weirdos in Chechnya to make the locals feel better and while you’re at it, maybe wave at the oppressed gays and give them a little hope from us at home.__

__

Maybe it’s just too close to home.  But that doesn’t make sense; it’s not close to home at all, at least in the geographical sense.  Nat grew up in Moscow.  Attended the Vaganova ballet school until she started training to be an assassin.  And it feels like she learned a lot more in the first dusty rosin-scented institution than she did in the Red Room.  Like how to be so perfect as to be unnoticed.  How to steal and lie about it.  How to break someone’s nose and not cry later in bed, how to purge with a finger stuck down her throat, how to grab a girl by the neck of her leotard and slam her against a stall door and silence her with a desperate kiss that tastes just as sour and bilious…

 

Nat’s ear is ringing.  Not in the sense of being sick and dizzy, though she does feel that way, but actually ringing.  Like a telephone. 

 

“What the…?”  Steve’s playing with the comm in his ear.  He can hear it too.

 

“Huh,” Nat breathes.  The in-ear communication devices they use have only one button, a power button.  In order to call each other or SHIELD HQ or anyone else, they just speak.  Use call signs and police codes.  There’s never been any phone etiquette involved.

 

“Um.  Hello?” Steve says uncertainly.  Static blooms over the connection, filling Nat’s ear.

 

“Did you know it was possible to call a comm with a landline?”  Nick Fury’s loud voice comes over the fragile connection.

 

“No,” Steve replies.

 

“Well, it is,” Fury states.  “What’s the status over there?”

 

“Three assailants down,” Nat supplies.  “I don’t know if that’s all of them.  They didn’t seem to have high-powered weapons or be coming from a central location.  They honestly kind of seemed like local thugs.  You sure they have a terrorism connection?”

 

“I would be working on it, but the power’s out,” Fury gripes.  Then, “You don’t sound good, Romanov.  What’s going on?”

 

Nat says, “I’m fine,” at the same time as Steve pipes up.

 

“She has a shoulder injury,” he says.  Nat flips him off.

 

“Hopefully not severe, ‘cause I couldn’t medevac you if I wanted to,” Fury says.  “You know that rain you flew through on your way off the east coast?”  He doesn’t wait for a response.  “Well, it’s a hurricane now.  We’re gonna have to put you on hold until tech comes back up.”

 

“Come on, it’s not like we’ve always been dependent on computers.”  Nat’s starting to feel a bit dizzy on her feet again, and she swallows hard and scrubs between her eyes before pressing on.  “If you give us the go-ahead, we can figure out their identities, track them on the ground…” Nat trails off to ensure she doesn’t throw up.

 

“I’m not giving you the go-ahead.  I can’t get you back up or evacuation if you need it.  I’m not gonna send you into Hydra or ISIS or even a gang of bank robbers alone without knowing exactly what it is.  I’ll talk to local PD and get these ones picked up.  It’s out of your hands for now,” Fury commands.  “And you really don’t sound good.”

 

“God.  I’m fine.”

 

“What’s the plan of action?” Steve asks, all good soldier.

 

“You have reservations at the Little Red Hen.  It’s a hotel, a sort of bed and breakfast.  You’re Mr. and Mrs. Jason Dudin, doing a little, what do you call it, family tree tourism?  Looking for your roots?”  There’s bad crackling on Fury’s end.  “Did you hear that?  It was thunder.”

 

“Wow,” is all that Steve says.  “You holding up ok in DC?”

 

“Yeah, all this is supposed to finish up today.  Should be blown over by tomorrow morning.  We’re lucky SHIELD has a basement and a good cafeteria,” Fury says with a chuckle.  “Rest and have fun for a day.  I’m sending a jet for you as soon as it’s safe to get off the ground here.”

 

Nat’s opening her mouth to tell Fury they don’t need to be picked up, but Steve speaks first.  “10-4.  You got it.”

 

“Over and out,” Fury says, and he must hang up the phone, because Nat’s comm goes dead.

 

“Alright,” Steve says, giving Nat’s slouchy frame a once-over.

 

“Alright,” Nat echoes.  “I guess we got marching orders.”

 

“You ok to march?  Walk?” Steve fumbles.  “I mean, you feeling ok?”

 

“Fine,” Nat says for the umpteenth time.

 

She is a little unsteady as they discreetly amble through back alleys until they find the secluded corner where they dropped their bio-lock protected suitcase.  It’s filled with a mixture of civilian clothes and toiletries and weapons and medical supplies and Belvita biscuits.  Nat immediately starts left-handedly stripping off her tight jumpsuit, but Steve stops her, holding out a bottle of water.

 

“Why?”  She narrows her eyes at him.

 

“You’re dehydrated,” he answers firmly.  He almost sounds pissed off.  Nat doesn’t blame him; she’s being a complete bitch.  Or rather, she’s behaving exactly the way one of their male team members would if he were injured and not feeling well and wanting to be left alone.  Sure, she’s a little more bristly and foulmouthed than Steve himself, but Barton or Stark would surely pull the same stunt.  It’s just her sex that makes her actions provocative.  __Young ladies don’t comport themselves that way, Romanova…__

 

“Fine,” Nat says.  She takes the bottle and quickly unscrews it to hide how much her hands are shaking.  She takes a swig, swishes it around, spits it into the street.  Then she re-caps the bottle and throws it back into the suitcase.  She gets her jumpsuit down around her waist and pulls on a long-sleeved t-shirt with a little difficulty.  Nat silently unlaces her boots and shimmies the jumpsuit over her legs.  She’s standing there in her underwear, poised to yank on a pair of jeans, when Steve stops her again.

 

“Why is your ankle bleeding?”

 

“I don’t know.”  Why __is__ her ankle bleeding?  Nat blinks for a second, the pain of her dislocated shoulder blotting out everything else in her recent memory.  Then it hits her with an __oh yeah…__  “I think I cut it on the dumpster.”

 

“God, Nat, it looks deep,” Steve says.  He’s got his own Captain America suit down to his waist, and he’s bending to palpate her lower leg.  “You must be really hurting if you didn’t notice this. Here, sit down for a second.”

 

Nat crumples the jeans onto the pavement and sits with her cut up right leg outstretched and her left one angled out in a half-butterfly.  It’s comfortable, and she doesn’t give a shit if Steve gets an eyeful of her sleek, athletic underwear.  At least it’s one thing to make her feel less like a kid getting a talking-to and hands-on care in the same sitting. 

 

Not good enough to keep the leaking memory away though.  __Madame roughly pulls the bloodstained pink satin pointe shoe from 12-year-old Nat’s foot, revealing lacerated toes and a shower of tiny diamond-like shards.  She asks who did it, who would hurt poor Romanova.  They all stay silent.  They’re punished with no dinner, so Nat eats alone, eats enough for all of them, vomits it up, and goes to sleep with her foot on a feather pillow, a gloat of guilt on her lips, and the remnants of a broken juice glass hidden under her bed.__

 

“Oh, god.  What the fuck?”  The rubbing alcohol stings enough to pull Nat back to the present.  Her whole face feels like it’s dripping, eyes watering, nose running, mouth filling with saliva all over again. 

 

“Sorry.  I had to sanitize it,” Steve says.  Per usual, he’s right.  She cut it on a damn dumpster after all.

 

“You could have warned me or something.”

 

“I did.”

 

Shit.

 

“You ok?” Steve asks.  Nat can’t be sure what he’s checking in about, but she thinks it’s probably more to do with her lack of mental presence than anything about her physical state.

 

“Yeah,” Nat says.

 

“When did you last have a tetanus shot?

 

“I don’t know.  Probably when you did last.”  She’s thinking of SHIELD’s medical exams and boosters.

 

“Back in ’45?  I don’t think so,” Steve says.  “That’s one I know I’m immune to.”

 

Since when did she get so stupid?  “Recently, I guess,” she tries again.  “I’m not overdue for anything.  Fury and Hill never miss a chance to stick me with a needle when I’m in medical.”

 

“I’ll take your word for it,” Steve says.  He slaps a few pads of gauze over the cut and tapes them down.  “Please tell me if that starts bleeding through,” he says, relinquishing Nat’s foot. 

 

“Sure,” Nat agrees glumly.  She steps into her jeans and fumbles the zipper and button with her left hand.  They finish dressing in silence and pack their gear into the suitcase. 

 

“So.  Off to our hotel.  Mrs. Dudin?”  Steve says a little clunkily.  He’s not as good at the undercover part as Nat.  “You need a first name.”

 

“Now about Nat?” Nat offers, knowing he won’t be able to get into the swing of calling her anything else.

 

“Funny,” he answers.  “You don’t happen to know the address to our hotel, do you?”

 

“Address?  No,” Nat says.  “But I’m sure I saw the sign for it earlier, when we were up the hill a little ways.”

 

Steve looks puzzled, then impressed.

 

“You know, away from that can of soup sign?  God, Jason, you’re so bad at directions,” Nat goads as they exit the alley and join the main road.  Steve drags the suitcase like the good husband, and Nat, with her immobilized arm resting across the front of her waistband, berates him like the travelsick or possibly newly-pregnant cranky wife.

 

The day is quickly slipping into twilight.  It takes them twenty minutes to walk to the hotel, and by that time it’s nearly dark.  It’s a quiet looking establishment that looks like an old fashioned coffee shop at the end of a strip of storefronts and facing a cobblestone courtyard.  The sign over the door shows a slightly frazzled pinkish-red chicken holding a loaded tea tray.

 

Nat checks them in, speaking to the elderly woman behind the counter in a mix of theatrically broken Russian and valley girl-infused English.  “My husband’s so excited to be here.  We’re tracking down his family line.  Do you know any other Dudins?”  She looks past the fact that Steve appears too white to be Chechen and as if he’s less than excited to be there.

 

They get a key for a room on the second floor, and Steve heaves the suitcase up the stairs.  Once they’re satisfactorily barricaded in the neat wood-paneled room, Nat sinks onto the foot of the bed.  One bed, a queen by the looks of it, dominates the modest space.  The thought of sleeping with Steve, her imaginary husband, is a hair’s breadth from revolting.  He’s such a gentleman that he’ll surely offer to sleep on the floor.  As rude as it feels to claim the bed for herself now, it’s infinitely better than having to hear him offer to accommodate her one more time.

 

Nat leans back so she’s reclined with her feet still on the floor.  Her injured arm still rests across her stomach, giving her the look of a teenaged girl suffering from cramps.  She’s never actually experienced the pain of menstruation, or seen it really.  Everyone at Vagonava suffered amenorrhea, and Nat’s uterus, non-functioning as it was, was removed before she graduated from the Red Room.  If Hollywood’s anything to go by, hanging off the bed with the arm around the abs and wicked mood muddling the mind is perfectly symptomatic of something that’s generally not a dislocated shoulder.

 

The bio-lock on the suitcase clicks and it unzips louder than seems necessary.  Nat’s head is throbbing.  Steve was right, she’s dehydrated.  Besides the swish’n’spit earlier, Nat can’t remember the last time she drank anything.  Or went to the bathroom.  She’s not thirsty at all, but Nat’s instincts tell her to join Steve pawing through the collection of gear and clothes and snacks and find something to drink, maybe with sugar and electrolytes to get her back in her right brain.

 

But given the choice between pride and hydration, Nat will choose pride every time.  Telling Steve he was right after all is out of the question.  Which is why, when Steve perches on the edge of the mattress beside her, Nat’s stomach twists in a manner more severe that that normally caused by such a motion.

 

“There’s ibuprofen, if you want some,” he offers gently, and Nat can hear the bottle rattling in his hand. 

 

This takes over-the-counter painkillers off the table.  “No,” Nat whispers.

 

“Hey, you don’t have to be all stoic and ride it out,” Steve says.  “You can take meds if you’re hurt.”

 

“No,” Nat repeats.

 

Steve sighs and flops to his back beside her.  They’re several inches apart, and Steve gives Nat the courtesy of not touching her, but body heat and whole aura are unintentionally oppressive. Nat would shift away a little, but it hurts too much.

 

“Nat.”  It seems like an old fashioned habit that he refers to her by name so much.  Nat hardly ever calls out anyone’s name, except in groups and over their walkie-talkie-like comms.  It’s a habit that places her firmly in the 21st century, far away from a time and place when faceless superiors wanted to have deep and meaningful discussions about her future.  __Romanova, have you considered…__  At least Steve calls her by her first name.

 

“Nat, I know this is annoying and it’s making you mad,” he says. 

 

Nat senses the __but__ coming.

 

“But, I just have to ask, one last time.  And no matter what the answer is, or what kind of things come up, it’s ok, and I want to help you.”

 

Oh, lord.  Get on with it.

 

“Nat?  Are you ok?”

 

That’s it.  She’s done.  Nat rolls over her left shoulder and ignores the heavy dizziness that comes when she lifts her head from the patchwork bedspread.  The tape around her ankle digs and pulls painfully against her sparse leg hairs as Nat stands up.  She’s almost at the door when she pauses.  Sees herself pushing out of Madame’s office as a little girl.  Leaping out of her handler’s car before it’s at a complete stop.  Skinny and shaky and ripping past the privacy curtain to escape her medical exam.  Then as her banged-up self, running away from her assigned partner.  Nat turns the doorknob and whispers, “No.”

 

It’s fully dark outside by now, and Nat doesn’t quite know where she’s going.  The air is edging toward chilly, and she doesn’t have a jacket.  But the sharp autumn breeze is like icy hot on her shoulder, so Nat doesn’t mind.  She needs something, badly.  Most people would go for food or water or sleep or human contact when they feel like this.  Nat’s head feels barely tethered to her shoulders, like her neck is the long, flimsy ribbon tied to a balloon.  She’s looking for something to quickly sever the connection.  Something to get her away from all things corporeal. 

 

Nat has no set path in mind when she starts down the sloping sidewalk toward the grubbier portion of the neighborhood.  She knows it’s dangerous to be alone at night in an unfamiliar and terror-stricken area of the world.  She also knows that Steve knows this, and he probably doesn’t trust her to take care of herself.  So he’s probably already mounting a rescue mission, and Nat hopes she can accomplish her task in her head start.

 

She’s familiar with what she’s looking for.  It’s still early in the night, but Nat’s sure she’ll find it.  It’s almost the same in every country.  The shifty-looking dark-haired guy in jeans and a black hoodie, standing not quite on the sidewalk and not quite receded into the alley.  Smoking.  Looking around.  Playing with his lighter.  And the small bulge in his pocket. 

 

Nat finds him between a closed record store and a mini mart.  She positions herself parallel to him and doesn’t make eye contact when she addresses him in Russian.  “Hey.”

 

“Hey.”  There’s a moment of silence, then he asks.  “Do you want something?”

 

“Do you want to give me something?”  She’s flirting.

 

“You’re too pretty to be a user.”  Either a counter-flirt or a brush off. 

 

Nat dips her ear in the direction of his smoke, which is starting to smell a little more illicit than regular hand-rolled tobacco.  “I’ll have what you’re having.”

 

Through innuendos of __big__ and __stuffed__ and __mmm yeah__ , he quotes her a price for a couple grams and to roll it himself with his special technique and a mix of dried flowers and herbs.  Nat digs in her pocket for cash.  She comes up with $30 US, which is a little short and made up of various bills the dealer seems not to recognize. 

 

But Nat can smooth it over.  She slowly tucks the currency into his pocket, the one not stuffed with drugs, and tantalizingly moves her fingers to her own waistband.  She’s teasing and struggling with obligatory left-handedness as she laconically works her jeans past her hip bones.  When she raises her eyebrows and smiles, he plants a hand in the small of her back and leads Nat into the alley, where she leans over a plastic milk crate so he can fuck her from behind. 

 

It’s impersonal, but not exactly unpleasant.  Nat feels every thrust in her throbbing head and twinging shoulder and gnawingly empty stomach, but she doesn’t let it hurt.  She makes appropriately breathy sounds while inhaling the scent of lingering cannabis and picturing the way Agent Hill’s bulletproof vests tent a little under the arms because they don’t exactly fit over her tits.

 

After a few minutes he’s done, coming with a soft grunt and, “Oh, baby.”  Nat turns her head to give him a wet kiss on the cheek before she pulls her pants back up.  Her underwear feels wet the moment they’re back in place, like the dealer’s load senses her non-functioning reproductive system and decides not to waste time staying inside her.

 

He rolls her joint with infatuated and glassy-eyed calmness, smiling and whispering, “See, it’s special,” as he sprinkles in lavender and rosemary from a scuffed pillbox.  He hands her the neatly constructed blunt, which resembles a cigar in its tan wrapper.  The lighter comes out, and Nat poises the joint between her lips, but the dealer pauses, smiles.  He pulls a plastic bag of white powder from his pocket, opens it, dips one finger in, and offers it to Nat.  “Since you’re having what I’m having,” he says as he inserts the tip of the finger into his nose and breathes in sharply.

 

Nat knows she probably shouldn’t, but she can’t resist the opportunity to self-destruct, especially when it’s handed out, free of charge.  She tucks the joint under her thumb and dips her left index finger into the bag, pulls out a snow-capped dusting of cocaine, and snorts it quickly.  Then the dealer lights her blunt.  Nat waves as she walks away, every bit of her burning.

 

The last time she did coke was a decade ago, when she was a freelancer, between KGB and SHIELD, and bouncing between the reaches of the former Soviet Union and the US as the highest bidder directed.  She was recently into her 20s, 97 pounds, and thoroughly addicted.  Not to anything in particular.  A line of coke here, a couple days of starving herself there, and a random homeless man’s head bashed in on Tuesday.  But then, before she took the greyhound bus to DC to meet with the latest buyers, the US government, she stopped over in nowhereville Iowa to get back down to earth, promising herself that the only thing tossed into the toilet after her home-cooked truck stop meal would be her stash of white powder.

 

Nat tells herself she’s still clean.  It’s a lie, but also true.  One night doesn’t a druggie make.  She knows she won’t re-develop a crack habit; she won’t be looking for a dealer once she’s back stateside.  That’s not the part Nat’s worried about. 

 

The truth is she’s been an addict since before she was a teenager.  Maybe her whole life, as she doesn’t know her parents.  Maybe she was a crack baby.  Or whatever you’d call them in Russian.  Since Nat’s earliest memories, she’ been poised to explode.  Gunshots soothe better than lullabies.  Hurting other people, hurting herself, has always been as appealing as cakes and days at amusement parks were to other children. 

 

Maybe it has something to do with being raised in a ballet school, where those who endure the most pain of teachers’ pinches and stretches and shouts and corrections are also somehow the most loved.  Nat was never much loved.  Her appetite was too voracious, her turnout not sharp enough, her breasts came too early.  She could go for days and speak to no one.  So Nat learned to love herself.  Or maybe just hate herself enough to believe she did.

 

The coke is perking up Nat’s senses as the pot is dulling them.  She feels exactly the same as she did earlier, just better.  Calmer.  The lavender and rosemary taste sweet and soft as Nat inhales the smoke that’s making her cough a little.  Every time a burst of air leaves her mouth, it slams through her nose as well, lighting up the aggravation the cocaine’s pricked up.  She can imagine she looks like she has a cold.

 

Nat finds her way back to the courtyard outside the Little Red Hen, where she loiters for a few minutes to finish her smoke.  She hasn’t been keeping track of time, but hopes it hasn’t been long enough for Steve to send out a search party or a BOLO.  Nat’s vision isn’t very clear, but she thinks she sees his silhouette in the window of what she thinks is their room.  She waves her middle finger in the air over her head to let him know it’s her, if he’s looking.  Though in the dark and with the end of the blunt in her hand, it probably looks like she’s shooting a peace sign or something.

 

When Nat’s joint gets to nubby to hold with her fingers and mouth at the same time, she drops it on the cobblestone and smashes it under her heel.  She takes a couple of deep breaths before heading inside.  She’d asked for a big one, but the smoke was probably stronger than she needed.  The lightness is turning quickly to lightheadedness.  While nothing is exactly painful, everything’s coming through Nat’s periphery like a swirling merry-go-round under a strobe light. 

 

She trips up the stairs, fumbles the lock on the door, and lets herself into the hotel room.  Nat’s intent is to fall face-first onto the bed, but the nauseous hiccup in her throat seems to have other plans.  She ignores Steve’s relieved mumble of whatever and ricochets into the bathroom to belch-heave emptily over the toilet.  She only gets a handful of seconds of privacy before he’s there, somewhere between Nat’s right elbow and the shower curtain.  If she had anything to puke up, she’d aim it directly for Steve.  But she doesn’t, so Nat heads back to Plan A and the bed.

 

She’s almost to the foot of it when everything flickers, the world shifts abruptly, and after a moment of free fall, absurdly malicious fire bursts up her arm, over her injured shoulder, and into her neck.

 

“Ah.  Fuck.  Why’d you—oh holy shit.”  It’s grumbled gutturally through gritted teeth that bite back another retch.  He should have let her hit the ground.

 

“I’m sorry.  Nat, I’m so sorry,” Steve’s releasing her, backing up with his hands poised like he’s about to be shot by a cop.  “I didn’t mean to, I just didn’t think.”  It goes on.  “I’m sorry, really.”

 

“You fucking weirdo,” Nat mutters.  Not her best insult, but she’s high.  Not thinking.

 

“God, Nat, I’m sorry.”  He keeps rambling for a minute while Nat arranges her head between her knees so maybe the walls will stop spinning. 

 

“Ok, I know you’re…you’re not well,” Steve says, sounding like he’s over asking Nat questions about her condition, but still walking on eggshells so as not to offend her or whatever.  “Can you sit up and drink some water?”

 

Her instinct is to say no again, but high Nat is somewhat more sensible than prideful Nat.  Her head is about to fall off, and her mouth tastes like nonexistent marijuana bile.  She doesn’t say anything as she braces her left arm uselessly against her left knee and sits up to take the lukewarm plastic bottle.

 

“Alright,” Steve says after Nat’s taken a satisfactory sip.  “How about some of this?”  He has the ibuprofen again.

 

Nat’s a little far bygone to remember anything about drug reactions, but she has a feeling she’d be better off declining.  Just say no to drugs.

 

“I…don’t think…I should…have any of that.”  She sounds breathless in the sexy way of black-and-white movie actress.  Not the emotion she was going for.

 

“Why?”  Steve’s forehead wrinkles.

 

“Why’d you think?”  If it would just come out as the growl she’s intending rather than a tease…

 

“I think…you’re high.  Or stoned.”

 

“That’s the same thing,” Nat slurs.

 

“Ok,” Steve says.  “Good to know.  How are you feeling?  I’m betting not very well.”

 

Nat breathes in deeply, smelling the micro abrasions inside her nose and all the weird scents clinging to her clothes and hair and skin.  “Yeah.  Like shit…pretty much.”

 

“Yeah.  Alright.”  Steve runs a hand over his face.  He probably never imagined he’d be in this situation.

 

“I’ll just…sleep it off,” Nat offers, trying to remove her burden from his shoulders. 

 

“Ok.  Good.”  He starts turning down the covers on the bed.  “Can you get over here ok?”  He’s still rueful about agitating her painful shoulder.

 

“Yeah.  I’m…” She’s about to say __fine__ , but Nat changes her tact.  “I can do it.”  She makes it up off the floor, kicks off her boots, and undoes her jeans again to drop them and her wet underwear before collapsing into the bed.  Steve turns around when she starts undressing, but starts to her side when she’s under the covers.

 

“I just want to look at your ankle again.  Make sure it’s not bleeding too much,” he says, bringing tape and gauze from the first aid supplies in the suitcase.

 

Nat, of course, has forgotten that injury.  Again.  “Yeah, yeah,” she allows.  She pokes her feet out from under the blankets so Steve’ll have a clear shot.

 

He squats beside the bed, and Nat expects to feel him tugging at the dressings on her wound.  He pauses, though.  Nat closes her eyes.

 

“Nat?”  Not again.

 

“Are you ok?”  Does he know how to ask any other question?

 

Nat peels her eyes open, ignoring the fact that they feel smoky and gritty, and gazes through the haze at Steve.  He’s looking at Nat’s pile of dirty laundry, which is topped with still-damp, slightly crusty soiled underwear.  What does he think it is?  A nasty yeast infection?

 

“It’s spunk,” Nat grumbles in slow-motion irritation.  “It’s—”

 

“I know what it is.”

 

“It’s nothing.”

 

“Nat.”  It’s a whisper.  “God.”

 

“I don’t believe in god.”  Not the tactful thing to say.

 

“Geez, no, I’m not gonna give you a religious talking-to,” Steve says.

 

“It’s not your business.”

 

“Yeah.  It’s not.  But, I’m worried about you.”

 

“So turn me in to Fury when we get back,” Nat pushes.

 

“Not like that,” Steve says.  “Yeah, risky behavior compromises the mission, but it’s different.  I’m worried about __you__.”

 

Nat sighs and holds for a moment.  “What do you think happened?”

 

“You were gone for just over an hour, and you got high and…had…intercourse with someone,” Steve states clinically and with a little difficulty.

 

“Yeah.  And it was nothing,” Nat affirms.

 

“But that’s not nothing, Nat.  That’s…it all could really hurt you.”

 

“It doesn’t,” Nat says.  She means deeply, like in the heart or whatever.  Cause if they were talking about headaches, she’d have to agree, and she doesn’t want to.

 

“I don’t want to tell you how to live your life or anything,” Steve hedges, probably parroting some SHIELD pamphlet designed to help him adjust to life in this millennium, “But, if it doesn’t break you a little to do stuff like that, that’s what’s concerning.  I mean, you’re worth so much more than that.”

 

The sentiment’s sweet, but impractical.  “You’ve never had a one-night stand?”  Her encounter was even less intimate, but she’ll call it that for all intents and purposes.  Which are currently to call Steve on the carpet as much as she can manage as the bed floats through outer space.

 

“Come on, Nat.”

 

“Have you?”

 

“Nat.”

 

“Steve.”

 

“Geez.  God.  Yes.  But only since I came back.”  So he claims practical purity up through ’45.

 

“And how was it?  Were they?”  Nat asks.

 

“I’m not sure I want to talk about it.”

 

“Well, I’m not sure I do either,” Nat spits back.

 

“Ok, fine.  I felt really horrible afterward, like I was cheating,” Steve admits.

 

“On who?  Peggy?”  Nat laughs dryly.  “The one who went and got married after she thought you died?  What an insult to your memory.”

 

“No.  I was, uh, I was cheating when I was with Peggy.”

 

“But I thought you never had a chance to fuck.”

 

“We didn’t.  But, god, Nat, this is what I mean.  When you really love somebody, care about them, you don’t have to fuck.  You can be unfaithful with just thoughts and casual interactions.  I owed, I owe…still.  To, ya’know.”  Nat’s not sure if he stops making sense or if she just stops understanding.  But then Steve picks up again.  “Even if you’re not…with anybody, you should still respect yourself enough to not have to do that kind of shit to feel loved.”  He’s frustrated.  Telling her off even though he said he wouldn’t.

 

Nat can’t stop from feeding his emotions; it’s starting to feed hers.  “You’re right, I’ve never been with anybody.  Nobody’s ever loved me.  You know what my missions are half the time?  My solo ones?  Go fuck somebody and get intel off them.  I’m depended on not to make connections.”  The words keep coming.  “And the one time I thought I was gonna make a connection, we had it for one night because he cheated with me on his fiancée.  And she was pregnant.  And he loved her enough to tell me we couldn’t keep it up.  But he didn’t love me enough to stay away to begin with.”  She doesn’t need to say it was Barton.  The tears probably give it away.

 

“Nat,” Steve says.  He puts his hand over hers.  “I’m sorry.”

 

She sniffs at him.

 

“I’m sorry things are like this.  I’m sorry you haven’t had support.”

 

“Is this gonna be a mental health speech now?”  Nat doesn’t mean for it to be verbal.  It comes out pretty muddled.

 

“No,” he assures.  “I know it’s hard to…to change how you think about stuff when it’s been one way in your mind for so long.  I mean, I…like, it’s all ok now.  And legal.  And even, he’s still alive, but still, I have.  I can’t even say it out loud.”  Nat probably has the gist.

 

“And I’m not saying change overnight or anything,” Steve presses on.  “But, I care if you get hurt, even if you don’t.”

 

“I’m not worth your trouble,” Nat mutters.  Her vision’s creeping in and out of black and white, and her headache’s on the point of nauseating.  She feels a little like a slug or something that’s better off left to die in a puddle of slime.

 

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Steve says.  “You’re my team.  My family.  You’re worth my trouble.”

 

Nat’s going to argue the point, she really is.  But her head throbs massively and Steve’s face distorts and she swears the bed flips upside down as she pulls her hand out from under Steve’s and presses it over her eyes. 

 

“Don’t feel good.  Got it,” Steve says, as if they weren’t just quasi-yelling at each other a moment ago.  “I’m just gonna look at your ankle, then you can go to sleep.  I bet you’ll feel a lot better in the morning.”

 

And he’s right.  Well, she still hurts neck-to-hip on the right side of her body, and her ankle’s pink and puffy around the laceration, and she has the dehydration headache to beat all headaches, but Nat’s ok.  She slides out of bed, avoiding Steve, who’s passed out on top of the covers beside her, and manages to take a shower before her vertigo dissolves into hunger pains.  She pulls on clothes and is munching her third packet of breakfast biscuits when Steve wakes up and looks at her blearily across the room.

 

“Morning,” he says.

 

“Hey.”  Nat doesn’t quite remember all of the previous night.  She’s got the highlights, though.  She behaved badly.  They argued.  He outed himself.  She kind of outed herself, but not about the same thing.  Something about self-respect.  Now they’re friends?

 

The phone on the bedside table rings, and Steve reaches over to answer it.  Nat can’t hear the words the speaker on the other end is saying, but the voice sounds familiar.  Steve’s almost laughing when he hangs up.

 

“It was Nicholas with the airline,” he reports with a grin.  “He said the weather has cleared, and our flight has been moved up to 11:30.”

 

Nat nods and stuffs another biscuit into her mouth. 

 

Steve sits up and musses his hair.  “So, what do you say we pack up and go find some real breakfast, Mrs. Dudin?”

 

Self-respect, huh?  “How many times do I have to tell you, Jason?  You must call me Nat.”  She smiles and swallows.

 

The humorously dramatic conversation is about the same as it was the day before.  But the understanding beneath it is markedly different.

 

______________________________________________

I see fire, oh you know I saw a city burning   
And I see fire, feel the heat upon my skin   
And I see fire 

**Author's Note:**

> Have I mentioned I don't like endings? I always try to tie things in bows, but then I feel like they're too disgustingly cute and perfectly rounded.


End file.
